those were the days

those were the days without 'rams', parental consent and mobile phones. nowadays, when you want to organise an outing for your pupils, you have to carry out a risk management exercise, obtain consent from parents and look into insurance and all kinds of welfare and you need to have a list of phone numbers.

i remember when i was a form-teacher of a secondary 3 class, i organised a cycling trip for my students, both girls and boys, from school (at balestier road) to pasir ris. all i had to do was to give the child a note to be handed to his parent/s about the intended outing. we all returned to school in one piece, without any incident.

another time, i took my students, also from a secondary 3 class, camping at pasir ris. the 5 boys stayed in tents with us for 5 days at the beach. we slept in different tents but we did go into each other's tent. there was no question of impropriety.

one group went on a night hike around the macritchie reservoir, got lost and had to spend the night in the forest. there was no panic, no anguished parents and no relay message of the incident to the ministry. everyone was calm because they had trust and confidence in the teachers who led the hike.